


the reliability of memory

by heixicanadragon



Category: Mansfield Park - Jane Austen
Genre: Culture Shock, Gen, POV Character of Color, all your faves are brown, being the ward of a racist family, racelifting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-07
Updated: 2013-10-07
Packaged: 2017-12-28 17:26:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/994601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heixicanadragon/pseuds/heixicanadragon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fanny's mother was disowned by the Bertrams for marrying a sailor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the reliability of memory

She thinks she remembers more than she forgets. But she forgets.

She remembers the smell of beans burning on the stove amidst the salt of the sea and the waft from the sewers. A dingy room dimmed by the dirty curtains hanging askew across the window. 

She remembers choking down a harshly spiced stew past tears as Father freezes past Mama again on his way out to a meeting on the docks. Mama forgetting and yanking through the snarls, destroying delicate curls, then throwing a kerchief at her to hide the fluff, hearing Mama growl about unruly children and spawn of layabouts.

Running outside with the pail to draw water, kerchief firmly tied, dodging spit and glares, unable to avoid either, rubbing at her cheeks’ color, ashen, bruised somewhere underneath.

Father’s limp creaking in the night, Father’s cough in the morning, Father’s scars on his cheek and neck in the sunlight, Father’s trousers and boots strewn on the ground as Mama flaps at him. Father’s voice raising in the island lilt as afternoon stretches thin.

She remembers Father charging in with squared shoulders to snatch dinner and rushing back out without a glance into a rhythm of drums. She remembers climbing to the small attic and feeling the beat of blood in her head, twitches of song in her feet, distant burbling voices clawing at the back of her throat. She remembers turning her head and closing her eyes.

Siblings romping around her, over her, snuggling into her, lying weakly in cots lined against the wall. Sympathetic, patient, courageous William talking to her about dreams and the future.

Beloved, tender, upright William leaving on a ship after wheedling his way into the service against high odds.

She remembers being sent away away from Portsmouth.

She remembers the catch in Mama’s breath the last time she was embraced. The small half-smile and the slide of eyes away. Father having already left for the day.

The wrinkling nose the cartman wore each time he looked back at her.

The Bertrams staring at her like when opening up a fish belly to clean only to discover maggots.

Mrs Norris dousing her hair and scrubbing her in a cold tub of water until her skin was raw, and then declaring that “nothing more can be done, a leopard can’t change his spots…”

Shivering in the echoing attic wrapped in a sheet over the three nights that it took for her hair to completely dry.

Sitting at table trying hard not to lose the food she inhaled as the two spruced girls and the two strapping boys sample several more courses. Her uncle’s look of inspection and judgment topped abundantly with raised brow and sideways sniff.

The next day sitting with the household’s servants and staring at food too nauseated to eat. The chatter that devolved into jabs and poking and pulling uncoiling curls from out of her kerchief. 

She remembers cringing, looking at the ground, walking silent and slow into rooms that pause and titter. 

She remembers having eyes that leak against her skin against her will into her pillow at night, eyes that puff with fatigue, eyes that redden against the smoke of the kitchen and the cut of Mrs Norris’ tongue, eyes that peek out of stolen glimpses of mirrors, eyes whose blue they say are impossible against skin that dark, that brown, in such a face as that.

She remembers a day kneeling among ridges of early spring turnips looking up into sky she can’t touch, realizing that the soil of the garden and the edges of the round sky above don’t meet and never will. 

She remembers pledging to herself to always remember. She thinks it would be impossible not to. She is not from here. She is from Portsmouth, from the sea, from not here. Not Mansfield Park.

Fanny Price doesn’t remember the moment the younger of the two strapping boys gave her some paper and a pen and offered to help her write home as the moment she began to forget.


End file.
